Intel Dothan 780 Overclocking with Liquid Nitrogen (LN2)

At -190?C you might be surprised how high you can overclock a CPU, with a few liters of Liquid Nitrogen to spare we poured it over a Pentium M 780 to see how high it would soar. Of course we don?t want to destroy our hardware so we?ll show you how to prevent condensation to save your hardware from failure.

Intro&Condensation Prevention

Do we need an Intro?

Not content with ordinary phase change cooling or even dry ice these guys met up to pour some Liquid Nitrogen over their hardware; the expression “Ice-Cold” is no more applicable here. This is their report of an Overclocking session using LN2.

The goal of this little endeavor is to overclock, of course, a high end CPU, the material used is listed below:

Currently the fastest Dothan CPU from Intel, the 780.

an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe (and a P4C800 “just in case”)

A custom made container which can easily be mounted on the CPU

A few liters of LN2

Preparation is the key

Since LN2 is rated at -190°C it’s essential to insulate your hardware so no condensation can spoil the fun. So we prepare the hardware for its subzero adventure.

The CPU socket and fan connectors are covered with tape so we can spray the surround area with a “plastic spray”

$20 for a bottle! Transparent protective conformal coating based on an acrylic resin. Plastik Spray is solderable and prevents corrosion.

The CT479 adapter gets the same treatment, this little device allows us to run Intel’s Dothan on a desktop board, the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe works especially well with it.

While we wait for the paint to dry (which takes approx. 30 minutes) we prepare the CPU. It’s brand new from the box as you can see:

Since we are placing a heavy container on top of the CPU it’s best to take some precautions, a previous overclocking episode resulted in a cracked damaged CPU core, so to prevent that from happening we installed a heat spreader from an old Athlon 64.

With the board now completely insulated we can start putting the pieces together.